The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Buckle up, it could be a bumpy ride – we’re set for a testing time as we join the stars of Secrets Of The Driving Test
Ah, the dreaded driving test. It’s probably one of the hardest tests that many of us will sit in our lifetimes. With the pass rate at less than 50% a year, it only seems right for ITV to make a show about it.
Secrets Of The Driving Test, Thursdays at 8pm, follows a handful of candidates in Englandshire who are about to sit their test and also films from inside the car during their test.
No doubt it will bring back the test nerves for those of us who spent a while trying to get their licence.
Indeed, it took me three attempts. The first time I’ll admit I definitely wasn’t ready and the third time I wasn’t nervous (which is probably what helped). I had the same examiner for both so I’m glad he got to see me improve.
But the second time is contentious and, to this day, I still don’t think I should’ve failed.
If you were a new driver, crossing one of the bridges over the Edinburgh bypass, with a broken-down car in your lane and a bus and a lorry heading towards you on the other side, you would wait for them to pass too before overtaking the broken-down car instead of trying to squeeze through the gap impatiently.
Well, that got me an instant fail for hesitation and as you can tell I have managed to move on from the situation and haven’t held a grudge all these years. But it also shows that the test can be unpredictable and even changes regularly to make driving more realistic. Indeed, in 2017 the test was adapted to include a sat-nav route, which the majority of candidates will have to follow for around 20 minutes.
In this first episode we start out by meeting 36-year-old Drew in South Wales, who is days away from his first ever driving test and who claims that cars terrify him and he doesn’t like going fast.
In one clip, his boyfriend Karl supervises him out on a drive and keeps pointing out that he is doing 20mph constantly – in both a 30mph and 40mph zone.
When the test comes round he is doing well. In the first 10 minutes he has no faults, then mounts the kerb as he turns into a junction.
He passes the manoeuvre of forward parking into a bay but then seems to get more nervous and takes the wrong exit on a roundabout and stalls one too many times at a junction (he was in third gear) and ultimately fails.
Then there is also 27-year-old Shaunna who is taking the test for the 12th time. I admire her perseverance. Her drive seems to be going OK but, 400m from the finish line, she sits at a junction for too long, waiting to turn right when the light is on green. When the examiner has to step in and tell you to go, it’s never a good sign. She fails as well but all is not lost as there are some success stories in the episode, and throughout the three-episode series, I believe.